BotW: DM insights from the oldest boyband in town; the Initiative decapitation; An Optus-Max partnership?
Welcome to Best of the Week, written in sunny South London while you were sleeping.
Today: IPG loses another agency leadership team to the consultancies; what Take That can teach you about direct marketing; another epochal week in AI, and will Max launch with a telco in Australia?
Happy National Cheese Soufflé Day.
Producing independent analysis of the media and marketing industry that goes beyond press releases takes time and resources. If you like what we do, you can support us by becoming a paying member. Upgrade today
A million data points
I spent much of the week across the road from Australia House on The Strand in London, where Advertising Week Europe had moved into its new home.
Advertising industry conferences of a certain scale like to sprinkle stardust upon the program. Calling in a favour from a talent agency or sports marketing consultancy to deliver a big final keynote from someone famous is one way of incentivising delegates to stick around until the end.
In much the same way that next week’s Mumbrella360 will close with a panel featuring Paralympian Dylan Alcott, Advertising Week Europe ended formalities with a panel featuring the three remaining members of Take That – Gary Barlow and the other two.
It’s the first time I’ve attended a marketing conference with a security guard keeping an eye on delegates from stage left.
After a few too many conversations at Cannes where some chief marketing officer makes it onto stage on account of their big budget, and earnestly asks Jay-Z and co about their process as if they’re two creative equals who could have been collaborating in the studio, I’ve become a little cynical about such sessions.
But having gone all that way, it seemed a little lazy not to make the effort of sneaking in to the over subscribed session. (Conference tip: go to the previous session in the room and when it ends, stand up and wander around, but don’t actually leave.)
There was a flash of insight into the Take That story that made it worthwhile. Band member Howard Donald explained how the group had a database strategy before data was even a buzzword.
Formed in 1990, the band worked the club and gig circuit, building buzz by “spinning on our heads” and performing every night.
And every night they would hand out forms for fans to register their details, dropping them into a yellow bucket at the front of the stage. By the time they signed to a record company in 1991, they were able to hand over a database of half a million names and addresses – at a time when the record companies were yet to build any sort of database strategy.
Odd that a 30 year old anecdote felt fresher than many of the other conversations across the three days. The speed of change is now so fast that so much of the rest felt instantly out of date.
There were several sessions on AI, and although the presentations would only have been written days before, they had clearly been locked down before the week’s big announcements from OpenAI and Google.
Until we live with them on our devices, it’s hard to say with certainty how they’ll change our working lives, but my instinct is that the new ChatGPT-4o brings AI acting as personal agents into the immediate frame. Are brands ready for the moment when they’re not talking to the customer, but to the customer’s AI? Because that’s weeks, not years away.
IPG loses another management team
Normally, the announcement of the coming departure of Nine’s TV sales boss Richard Hunwick after a big innings would have been the media world’s exit story of the week.
Hunwick’s finishing up in September is as significant a moment for Nine as the departure of Seven’s national sales director Natalie Harvey late last year. TV advertising is going through its changing of the guard.
But a much bigger bombshell – of the multiple “have you heard?” texts variety – came on Thursday evening.
The top tier of IPG’s media agency Initiative have walked out, to launch consultancy Accenture’s full service media arm. CEO Melissa Fein, national MD Sam Geer and strategy chief Chris Colter are all part of the plan.
There are echoes of the way that consultancy Deloitte launched its creative offering seven years ago by grabbing four of the top staff of McCann Melbourne – MD Adrian Mills, head of strategy and media, David Phillips, executive creative director Matt Lawson and digital media lead Justine Mills.
It’s extraordinary that IPG should once again be the holding company that sees a consultancy take out one if its agency’s top tiers in a single swipe.
Strategically, it makes sense for the consultancies to do it this way. Consider that when Accenture got properly into the creative game, it cost it $63m to acquire The Monkeys. Hiring a key management team who’ve already got an established way of working together offers many of the benefits of an agency acquisition but at a fraction of the cost.
The bigger story though is that Accenture is going down the full service route. That’s a massive new dynamic in the market.
To the Max, with a telco
Capital Brief carried an intriguing report this week. It says that Warner Bros Discovery has been talking to the telcos about potential partnership deals for the local launch of its streaming platform Max.
Max will carry all of that lovely HBO content currently the backbone of Foxtel’s offering.
If the strategy does end up as Max partnering with a telco, then Telstra may already have too many horses in the race – it owns a third of Foxtel Group and a majority stake in Fetch.
Logically, that leaves Optus. With Optus parent company Singtel cutting costs, that might create an elegant exit for it from Optus Sport, something we speculated on this time last year.
It might be just as attractive for WBD. In other markets, including the US, Max offers local sport.
Unmade Index closes the week on a down note
The Unmade Index finished the week by slipping back by 0.55%, in a particularly bad day for Hot Copper’s owner The Market.
The Market, previously known as The Market Herald before rebranding after messy boardroom showdowns, lost 15% on Friday, slipping to its lowest point since July 2020 with a market capitalisation of $55m.
The company is now worth significantly less than the $87m it agreed to pay for Gumtree, Carsguide and Autotrader in 2022.
COTW: Jason Donovan, the new hubby
In each edition of BotW, our friends at Little Black Book Online highlight their Campaign of the Week
LBB’s APAC reporter Casey Martin writes:
This week’s Campaign of the Week
Howatson+Company breathed life into the mundane subject of household bills in a new campaign for iSelect.
The three ads, including one with a Jason Donovan cameo, house a dry sense of humour.
In case you missed it…
On Monday we kicked off the week with the news that ARN Media’s attempt to buy its rival Southern Cross Austereo was in jeopardy.
On Tuesday, in a members-only post, we examined the issues behind the takeover and explained what it would take to get a deal done
On Wednesday, Humain’s curator Cat McGinn shared her misgivings about the race towards generative AI
On Thursday, we talked to News Corp’s Lou Barrett in a conversation which put an Australian premium content exchange back on the agenda
And on Friday, we assessed the significance of the “omni” update of ChatGPT-4o
Time to leave you to your Saturday.
By the time you receive this, I’ll be home from the pub, in the aftermath of Southampton’s all-or-nothing battle with West Brom to make next weekend’s playoff final for a return to the English Premier League.
And Abe Udy, Cat McGinn and I will be back on Monday for Start the Week.
Have a great weekend.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher – Unmade
tim@unmade.media
